Recent late night scribbles...

Maybe a new idea for a painting? We'll see..


Melissa wants a french bulldog bad. Like really bad. All I can do for now is draw her pictures of them until we have the place to keep one.

Top Albums of 2008

The music blog Zeitgeist has released a list of the top 50 albums of 2008 according to its blogging community. The best part is - you can listen to each album in its entirety! Very cool, although I'm not sure I agree with the #1 album. Happy 2009!

Bloc Party in stop motion

Bloc Party - One Month Off

I just came across this video from Bloc Party for their new single off of "Intimacy". It combines some retro looking stop motion with classic fables and modern themes to create a pretty interesting juxtaposition.

Fireworks

Started a new one...

Updates: Band Together

I've been pushing through the rigging phase of the short lately. 3 of the characters have body rigs and 2 have face rigs as of right now. I was hoping to get all 4 main characters done by the new year, but that seems like it might not happen now. I am happy with my progress overall though. I finally have some animation to show! Check it out:

And.. if you hadn't noticed already, the film has a logo! Its about time it had one of those..

First Image: "Cloudy"

Cinema Blend just posted the first image from "Cloudy with a chance for Meatballs" the upcoming film from Sony pictures animation. The character designs are interesting. I'm not sure that I like the hands but the faces and bodies look pretty cool and stylized. I cant wait to see them in motion. You can read the full article here.

Gobelins Student Films

The latest batch of student films from French animation school Gobelins is online now. As usual, its awesome stuff!

Animated News and updates

Hey, I hope everybody had a good Thanksgiving. I am working away on Night at the Museum 2 right now, but I wanted to take a timeout and update the blog with a few cool animated trailers that are floating around the web right now. I had the chance to see Bolt when it came out last week and I really liked it. Its too bad its not doing better at the box office. I'll be back with some more stuff from Band Together soon. I've been working on it quite a bit lately.
Coraline:

Tralier:

Making of featurette:

Astro Boy:


Also, the Annie Award Nominees have been announced for this year, check em out. Thats it for now!

Band Together: Progress Update

For the last 3 weeks or so I have been working on Band Together almost full time. I've made a lot of great progress during that time. I finished this concept art for the Cave Oasis in the story last week. I've been able to finish all the models, as well as a few rigs. In fact there is only 1 rig that I havent started and that should go fast at this point. I started doing some test animation on the first versions of the rigs and its looking promising. I am shooting to have all of the rigs done, weighted and ready to go by the end of the year so I can concentrate on the visual story telling and animation style starting in 2009. Its been almost a whole year since this project started, and I am enjoying every minute of it now. I can't wait to get these characters moving. More updates soon!

Oblivious

"Oblivious" acrylic on canvas

Finally finished this piece over the weekend after a nice week long vacation. Back to work tomorrow!